They did speak as men do who perfunctorily acquit themselves of a duty, but praised
 extravagantly what I had written, saying about it such things that if any people had heard
 them who were not my personal friends and kindly disposed towards me, they could not
 possibly have failed to suppose that my visitors were trying to make a fool of me and that
 I had lost my wits and was altogether a simpleton if I allowed myself to be persuaded of
 what they said. But, although I had this feeling about the things which they made bold to state, I did
 allow myself to be persuaded (for why make a long story of it?) to occupy myself with the
 completion of the discourse, at a time when I lacked but three years of having lived a
 century and when I was in a state of infirmity such that anyone else similarly afflicted,
 so far from undertaking to write a discourse of his own, would not even be willing to
 listen to one worked out and submitted by another.